the ranking phenomenon
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www.petersons.com
U.S. News broadened the approach by ranking whole institutions and
publishing the results in a special annual issue. What a brilliant move it
turned out to be! Nearly a half million copies of the first issue sold and
by the late 1990s U.S. News was printing more than 2.3 million copies.
Sales were so good staff began referring to it as their "swimsuit issue."
Predictably, U.S. News' success spawned a variety of copycat efforts
in the publishing world. Newsweek partnered with Kaplan Testing Ser-
vice to produce its own annual guide. Time partnered with The Princeton
Review for theirs. Money magazine later threw its hat into the mix.
Researcher Patricia McDonough of UCLA, who has studied the
growth and impact of the ranking industry, estimated that by the end of
the decade about 6.7 million copies of newsmagazine college rankings or
guides were being sold each year. Even more were distributed free of
charge. Total sales were estimated to be approximately $15 million, not
including advertising revenue.
Since her study, the industry has only grown larger. There are specialty
guides to the "most wired colleges" and colleges that "encourage character
development." There are lists of cheap colleges, most conservative col-
leges, most liberal colleges, and most disability friendly colleges. In such an
aggressive, self-promoting business, publishers try to find new ways to nab
a student's attention. The Princeton Review, for its part, builds its rankings
around catchy ranking categories. On its Web site, it's possible to locate
both "jock schools" and institutions populated by "dodgeball targets." There
are colleges where "professors get high marks," and losers where "profes-
sors suck all life out of materials." Both "bleeding heart liberals" and "stone
cold conservatives" will find a place to call home.
Faced with these kinds of attention-getting gimmicks, it is tempting
to dismiss rankings. But after 20 years, there is strong evidence that rankings
have become an important resource for many college-bound students,
especially those who are choosing one of the nation's more selective col-
leges. A much cited study by McDonough found that while less than half
